SOURCE: Chavdarian, Seda A. “Michel Butor's La Modification: The Revolution from Within.” International Fiction Review 13, no. 1 (winter 1986): 3–7.

In the following essay, Chavadrian regards Butor as a “literary revolutionary” for playing with narrative conventions within La Modification, arguing that this strategy encourages reader participation while simultaneously challenging the reader's notions of what a novel should be.

Although Michel Butor has never been a political writer per se, he is very much a literary revolutionary for he believes deeply in the ability of a work of art to change man's place in society or society itself: “Toute oeuvre est engagée … plus elle est profondément inventive et plus elle oblige à un changement.”¹ His collaboration with other artists is, in part, a clear example of his willingness to change the traditional boundaries that separate the different fields of artistic expression.

Butor's best known novel, La Modification (1957),² has obtained its comfortable...